[The] app offers over 900 diverse emoticons, ranging from same sex and interracial couples to varying dog breeds and facial expressions. The app also has images for many emoji hand symbols but with different skin tones. The icons can be used in texts and emails, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Creator Katrina Parrot says all the discussion about emoji diversity is what inspired iDiversicons. “Why don’t emoticons look like the person sending them?” her daughter Katy asked her. The simple question led her to make just that happen.

“We wanted all people to be able to find an emoticon that looked like them,” Parrot told the Houston Chronicle.

At NASA, Parrot was a program manager. But since she got laid off and had a lot of free time, she purchased Apple’s Developer Program, hired an illustrator and went to work composing what would become iDversicons.

The app launched in the App Store October 2013. After successfully raising $2,000 in May 2014 to further improve the Apple version of the app, Parrot made the application available for Android through the Google Play store in June.

How important is it for people of color to be accurately represented in emojis?

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